Warning message

3 tips for promoting your fundraiser on social media

Follow these easy steps to make your fundraiser a viral success!

Fundraising for World Animal Protection is a great way to do something fun, challenging, and help us protect animals across the globe! Many of our generous supporters opt for an online fundraiser (through platforms like JustGiving).

We know that a key part of running a successful fundraiser is promoting it on social media, so we have collected our tried-and-tested best tips to spread the word online!

1. Make it visual

Make sure to always add lovely photos to your fundraising page and your social media posts! Marketing research shows that posts with images and videos receive much more clicks, likes and comments compared to text-only ones.

Don’t forget to add a cover photo to your fundraiser page: this photo will be shown every time someone shares the link to your page on social media, so it’s crucial to getting visitors to your fundraiser.

Bonus tip:pick a photo of yourself with a pet, since people who are likely to donate to animal welfare causes are also going to be animal lovers – a photo with your pet will capture their attention!

2. Tell a story

This is the part that explains your fundraiser. Make sure to tell your potential donors about these topics:

Who you are: your fundraiser might reach people who don’t know you yet, so don’t forget to tell readers who you are.

Why you are fundraising: what moves you to move the world to protect animals? Are you fundraising to honour someone’s memory, for a special cause or occasion? If your motivation is that you are an animal lover, tell them about why you love animals!

What you are doing: tell readers about the challenge you will face to raise funds for animals, and what that means to you. For example, if you’re running a marathon, don’t just stop there – briefly describe how you will prepare for it (training, buying running gear, waking up early to run before work, researching nutrition for athletes…)

Why World Animal Protection: what moved you to fundraise for us? Don't forget to tell your readers about who we are!

Bonus tip: keep it as short as you can – most social media usage takes place on our mobiles, when people don’t have time to commit to a long read. A long description might scare readers away, while keeping it minimalistic will still convey your message.

3. Keep people in the loop

Posting updates is as effective as posting your initial “I’ve started a fundraiser” posts! Telling your followers about your continuing efforts is a great way to encourage them to donate. It reminds them that you’re fundraising without being repetitive, and it opens a breadth of possibilities to convince someone to donate.

You can keep your existing donors updated through JustGiving, and your followers through social media. Keep the two connected so that everybody hears about your fundraising journey: add a link to your fundraiser to all your social media posts, and make sure your social media links are featured on your JustGiving page.

Bonus tip: as with every social media post, make sure to include nice photos or videos! Keep your followers engaged with questions and polls, behind-the-scenes photos and even live videos!

Will World Animal Protection share my fundraiser?

We're very lucky to have hundreds of active and generous supporters who go above and beyond to help us with our work protecting animals. Because there are so many fundraisers, we are only able to share the very best pages on our channels. Keeping our newsfeed interesting and varied also helps maximise the effectiveness of our channels, so that our posts can reach far and wide. For a chance to be featured on our pages, make sure to follow the steps above and tag us in your posts. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thank you so much for your support!